Booker T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery” promotes a vocational training for blacks imbued with Christian virtue. Is W.E.B. Du Bois’ critique of it justified?
Continue reading...Reading Journal
Coming to Booker T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery”
The circumstances of my purchase and knowledge of “Up From Slavery,” Booker T. Washington’s most famous autobiography
Continue reading...Reading Journal: Assembling Dinosaurs, “War and Peace”
A glorious night when I just wanted to keep reading: first, 25 pages of Lukas Rieppel’s “Assembling the Dinosaur”; then Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, concluding Volume III; a feast of the undeveloped imagination.
Continue reading...Anna Seghers’ “Transit”: Profound Unknowing
In Anna Seghers’ novel “Transit,” no one really knows who the other is. The reader is never certain of who the narrator really is.
Continue reading...George Saunders’ “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline”
George Saunders’ short story collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, was born in a minimum security prison in central Pennysylvania
Continue reading...Willa Cather’s “Death Comes for the Archbishop”
A novel of religious devotion genuinely spiritual without falling into the mirthless repetition of ecclesiastical doctrine
Continue reading...Notes on Lampedusa’s novel “The Leopard”
Idle reflections on The Leopard, by Giuseppe de Lampedusa, which narrates several events in the life and afterlife of a 19th-century Sicilian noble
Continue reading...Krasnahorkai’s “The Last Wolf”
A reading journal entry on Lázló Krasnahorkai’s “book” The Last Wolf, which is really two small books.
Continue reading...Captivating corruption: Single sentence exegesis
Single sentence exegesis.
Continue reading...William H. Gass’ “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country”
Reflections on the short story collection In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William H. Gass
Continue reading...200111: Reading Journal
Reading journal from early in the year 2020, when COVID was hitting China but just a dirty word in the mouth of an imbecile
Continue reading...200107: Reading Journal
The January 2010 reading journal addresses In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, Our Idiot Brother, Filmed Thought, and Jamaica Inn
Continue reading...Does Philosophy Do Film?
“Clearly you are not a bowler”: Can film do philosophy? Can philosophy do film?
Continue reading...Booth Tarkington’s “The Magnificent Ambersons”
Why do some works of art age better than others?
Continue reading...Patricia Highsmith’s “Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes”
The promise of unnatural catastrophes turns out not to be catastrophic nor unnatural enough
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